FEATURE
THE URGE TO PURGE
Cleansing and detoxing isn’t scientific.
So why do so many Albertans do it?
I
By NAOMI K. LEWIS
“I’VE FELT KIND OF BACKED UP since I had my daughter
last year,” an acquaintance told me, drinking herbal tea instead
of her usual coffee.
“I cleanse every spring,” said another, a few months later,
munching on plain brown rice and lettuce.
“I’ve just been feeling kind of toxic,” said another, as he
sipped a glass of filtered water with organic lemon juice and
maple syrup in lieu of a meal.
They were all on detox diets or fasts. A few online surveys
later, I realized I was feeling toxic too. Fatigue? Check. Bloating?
I poked my belly. Check. Grumpiness. Yeah, sometimes, for
sure. Asthma, migraines, allergies. The verdict: I was a walking
bag of toxins.
My spouse and I went to the health food store and bought
a detox diet, or “herbal cleanse,” with recipe book and several
bottles of supplements. Three ascetic days later, we were
hungry, grumpy and spending plenty of time in the bathroom
thanks to the supplements, a.k.a. laxatives. We gave up, and
celebrated our inner filthiness with spaghetti bolognese and
large glasses of Scotch.
Then we did some googling. How do detox diets work,
anyway? What was the science? We found a swirling vortex
of confusion. I started asking friends and found a fairly even
division between believers and eye-rollers, and the same
42 A L B E R TA V I E W S N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1
among health professionals. I developed an uncomfortable
itch at the back of my mind. I wasn’t ready to dismiss the detox
story—but somehow it didn’t sound quite right.
CALGARY NATUROPATHIC DOCTOR Aparna Taylor
acknowledges that detox has often been dismissed by the medical
establishment, but speaks of a “paradigm shift” whereby “science
is possibly catching up with… the inability of our bodies to
efficiently detoxify the chemicals, preservatives and additive load
of toxic exposures—anything from the food we eat (e.g., trans
fats) to environmental exposure.” Depending on whom you ask,
these nasties cause a panoply of symptoms, including everything
from lethargy, bloating and malaise to arthritis, asthma and
migraines. Special diets and fasts give the digestive system a rest
so it can focus energy on releasing and excreting the toxins.
Enamoured of wiping clean from
the inside, detoxers describe bowel
movements in excruciating detail.
Detoxers, in my experience, are often enamoured of the
idea of being wiped clean from the inside. They’re driven
to describe bowel movements in excruciating detail. Some
websites feature photographs of enthusiastic detoxers’ gloopy
output lifted out of the toilet. It’s not just naturopaths, purified
friends and online poo photographers pushing the merits
of getting cleansed; publications such as Chatelaine and The
Globe and Mail often print gleeful “spring cleaning” articles
about the diets.
A L B E R TA V I E W S N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 43
P H O TO C O N C E P T B Y B E AT E W I C H M A N N
FEATURE
Tanis Fenton, adjunct assistant professor of community
health sciences at the University of Calgary, says it’s a misguided
trend. “Detoxification is something our liver and intestines do
constantly; this normal process is supported by good food,
especially vegetables, fruit and fibre from whole grains, and by
drinking enough water.”
Perhaps the most prolific detox detractor is Dr. Stephen
Barrett, a psychiatrist and author who founded quackwatch.
com (and who has been dubbed by Deepak Chopra “a selfappointed vigilante for the suppression of curiosity”). Barrett
insists detox diets are a scam, plain and simple: that toxins do
not build up in the body and cause disease, that the colon is
not caked with old feces and that constipation is not toxic, only
uncomfortable.
MDs and dieticians say detox is bunk; believers say the
medical establishment wants to keep us sick and drugdependent, but that detoxing can set us free—the kind of
conspiratorial claim Barrett cites as one of the first signs of
quackery. Definitely an impasse, but so what? Can’t both sides
be kind of right?
Terry Willard, director of Calgary’s Wild Rose College of
Natural Healing, says it doesn’t really matter what naysayers
preach; plenty of people in Alberta and beyond want to detox.
“Those are the people we’re working with,” he says. “Not the
people… trying to over-intellectualize.” Sounds reasonable:
if you don’t believe in detox, then don’t buy the diets and do
mind your own business.
B
BUT IF BARRETT IS RIGHT, AND DETOX DIETS DON’T do
what the packaging promises, this is a problem. Most obviously,
people are buying a false bill of goods, while others are raking
in money. Terry Willard says 10,000 of his Wild Rose Herbal
D-Tox kits sell every month, at about $30 a pop, depending
on the retailer. Kim Ryrie, a buyer for Calgary’s Community
Natural Foods, says Willard’s cleanse outsells every other brand
they carry by far, probably because it’s Albertan.
Second, genuinely sick patients may choose these treatments
instead of ones that actually work. Third, detox diets can make
people sick. Though many critics call detox diets expensive
and useless but harmless, Fenton says risks include electrolyte
abnormalities, heartburn, liver problems and high blood
pressure.
This leaves the final issue, that of pseudoscientific language.
In 2009, UK-based Voice of Young Science published a
dossier and pamphlet about the detox rhetoric used to sell
diets, shampoo, bottled water and other products. According
to participant Alice Tuff, then with the charity Sense About
Science, the project reacted to “phrases that sounded scientific
but have little or no scientific meaning.”
44 A L B E R TA V I E W S N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1
THE HARDER I TRIED TO PIN DOWN DETOX RHETORIC,
the more proponents’ vocabulary slipped through my fingers.
When I asked about the terms “toxins” and “detox,” no
one could provide a consistent definition. I also found that
scientific studies and facts have been distorted to support
detox-related claims, especially Laval University’s oft-cited
study showing elevated levels of pesticides and other chemicals
in the bloodstream during weight loss. Detox proponents draw
on this study to paint vivid pictures of chemicals stuck in our
bodies, dislodged only by detoxing. But, Fenton stresses, detox
diets do not cause such chemicals to “mobilize” (or become
released), and mobilizing them is not a particularly good idea
anyway.
Then there’s the scientific method. Detox proponents just
don’t seem to care for it. When I asked Oregon naturopathic
physician Dickson Thom why detox diets never undergo
scientific tests, he said no one has ever done a double-blind,
placebo-controlled study on parachutes, either. Detox diets,
like parachutes, “follow natural laws which need no scientific
proof… natural laws use common sense to justify their
effectiveness.”
Yes, our construction of, and understanding of, parachutes
is based on established scientific knowledge about the
universe’s physical makeup and laws—but that knowledge
has been established via the scientific method, not common
sense. Conversely, detox-related claims are incompatible with
established knowledge about the human body. What if I claim
bad luck can be alleviated by drinking litres of green juice that
washes tiny bad-luck elves from the bloodstream? Wouldn’t
the first step be to test the bloodstream for these elves? No one
would bother, for the same reason that no one bothers to test
detoxers’ stool or sweat for toxins: because they already know
they won’t find them.
This doesn’t mean the phrases “unlucky” and “feeling toxic”
fail to refer to anything. But whatever they do refer to cannot
be explained by physical entities lodged in the bodies of their
sufferers. Feeling toxic is just not that kind of thing. And
neither are the toxins that cause it. “Can science prove that
Christ was Christ, Buddha was Buddha? No,” Willard told me.
“It’s not that kind of material.”
When asked whether detox fell into the realm of science,
Willard said, “For some things, it just doesn’t matter what’s
scientific and what’s not scientific.”
But it does matter. As Sense About Science’s Tuff says, “People
have a right to know when the claims made by commercial
producers and retailers are empty and not actually based
on scientific evidence despite being dressed up in ‘sciencey’
words.”
A couple of the countless sciencey-sounding claims about
detoxification: “The body moves from constantly working
against negativity after it eliminates the toxins that have
collected in your body for years” (mastercleanse.org). “The fecal
matter on your intestinal lining may be very thick or very thin
depending on your lifestyle, genetics, eating habits and a variety
of other things…” (drfloras.com).
THE URGE TO PURGE
ALL OF THIS INVITES THE QUESTION: IF DETOX IS
not part of a scientific theory, what is it? Writer Helen Foster
offers a hint with her book Detox: 14 Plans to Combat the
Effects of Modern Life, which I picked up in the grocery store.
Like many proponents, Foster says toxins include everything
from pesticides to fat to alcohol to stress. According to some,
even electromagnetic waves emitted by computers and other
electronics count, as do negative thoughts.
How can ingested substances, physiological and mental
states and microwaves all belong in the same category, with
one cure-all? This is why I resist calling detox, with its related
ideas, a theory—it’s just not coherent enough. Foster’s book
title implies that “toxins” are not so much physical substances
as anxieties and neuroses about uncontrollable aspects of our
modern lives.
However, longing to scrub our insides clean is nothing new.
Far from it. According to an article on “autointoxication and
faddism” by Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, a widespread belief in
18th-century France that impacted feces caused just about
every disease had people using enemas up to three times daily.
Late 19th- and early 20th-century England saw a preoccupation
with toxicity that rivals our own. One Charles A. Tyrrell made
a fortune selling the “Cascade,” an “internal bath” contraption
supposed to cure and prevent myriad illnesses. Others treated
the pestilent colon with yogourt, spa treatments and all
manner of cleaning implements. Dr. William Arbuthnot Lane
partially removed colons to rid the buildup inside and thereby
prolong life. In most cases, practitioners equated cleaning (or
removing) the colon with a return to a more “natural” state—
the Cascade was like inner sunshine; Lane’s surgery corrected
a flaw arising from humans’ evolution to the upright position.
Ancient Egyptian physicians were also preoccupied with
hurrying fecal matter through the digestive system before it
poisoned the rest of the body. According to Sullivan-Fowler,
constipation and aggressive treatments for it are mentioned in
medical treatises and advice literature from Assyria, Babylonia,
Sumer, China, India, Greece and Rome.
Believers say the establishment
wants to keep us sick—a claim
Barrett cites as a sign of quackery.
This isn’t the whole story, though. Detox diets don’t claim
only to clean the bowel but also the soul, usually without noting
any significant difference between the two. Several detox
websites announce “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Willard
cites religious fasts such as Lent, Yom Kippur and Ramadan as
evidence that detox diets address a deep-seated human need to
purify, atone and start afresh. When I asked if the Wild Rose
cleanse therefore addresses moral rather than physical purity,
he said “We don’t really know… but even that in itself is a good
enough reason to do it.”
External cleaning can assuage guilt and anxiety—a
phenomenon Psychology Today writer Carlin Flora calls “the
Macbeth effect”—and detoxing may simply be an extension
of this longing for purity. Flora believes it “entirely likely that
envisioning the buildup of ‘junk’ in our bodies is a way of
expressing cumulative emotional damage. Get rid of that and
perhaps you can purge personal heartaches, too.”
M
MY FRIEND M., WHO WORKS IN THE SUPPLEMENT
section of a health food store, nails it when she says detox is
“a potent metaphor.” A metaphor with real effects on people
suffering from malaise, general feelings of impurity and
anxiety in the face of a decadent culture, polluted environment,
alienation from food sources and the ubiquitous chaos of life.
Near the end of my interview with Willard, he said I was
unlikely to understand detoxing because my thinking was too
linear.
“Unfortunately,” he told me, “our society sometimes lives
too much in their left brain and has to understand the why for
everything. I mean, I can look at a sunset and go ‘Oh wow, is
that ever a beautiful sunset! Gee, I wonder why it’s beautiful…’
Sometimes by explaining it, the whole thing falls apart; the
beauty falls apart.”
And this is my point. Scientists are interested in why the
sunset appears the way it does. Artists and worshippers are
interested in its beauty and awesomeness. Detox may have its
merits, but it is not scientific and practitioners are misleading
and unethical when they claim it is. Feeling toxic is caused by
physical substances called toxins or it isn’t. Detox diets remove
harmful physical substances from the body or they don’t. And
Barrett is right: they don’t.
Detox proponents, I think, have a dilemma on their hands if
much of the help they offer depends on dishonesty or at least
confusion. So why don’t they just drop the pseudoscientific
language and call detox a salve for the civilization-battered soul?
For good reason: detox may not work anymore if presented as
a secular Lent instead of a medical practice. The placebo effect
works because the patient believes in the treatment, and many
people need to believe in the treatment as medicine, not as
metaphor. This is true for me; research and reason have stolen
my toxic feeling away.
But despite having talked myself out of it, I doubt the desire
to detox is in danger: it seems almost built into the fabric of
humanity. Still, I’ll remember Fenton’s advice, who suggests
that when plagued by a toxic feeling of the gut, to eat a lot
of fibre, and when plagued by a toxic feeling of the soul, to
consider exercise, quiet reflection and maybe prayer. I’ll add:
try listening to music, reading a good book, watching a sunset.
Naomi K. Lewis is an editor, writer, novelist, ghostwriter, teacher
and the Calgary Public Library’s 2011 writer-in-residence.
A L B E R TA V I E W S N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 45
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